It’s hard to watch “All Is Lost” and not focus on Redford’s mortality – or, hell, your own mortality. It’s the type of unvarnished role his advisers had been urging him to take for years, but he’d become encased in his own dilemma. He’d spent his entire career rebelling against just being another good-looking guy but only partially leaving his comfort zone. Every film Redford has been involved in for the past half-century has him playing a hero; it might be subverting the cliché – like in ‘The Candidate’ – but it’s still the hero. In ‘All Is Lost,’ Redford doesn’t play a hero; just an old man trying to survive.

Robert Redford turned 77 a few weeks before Telluride. He still carves turns on his own mountain, but it is now easier for J.C. Chandor to raise money for his next film than it is for Redford. In a grand irony, the actor’s next role is the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the sequel to Captain America, the type of blockbuster that led Redford to flee Hollywood for Sundance.

“This is the new deal,” Redford explains. “This is the way the film business is going, with high-tech, high-budget, high things. So many parts of it were not recognizable to me. I thought it’d be interesting to have the experience.”

While he now claims he’s trying harder to stay in touch with his past, there is little evidence. I mention that I’d recently interviewed James Salter, a former Redford confidant who wrote ‘Downhill Racer.’ His face lights up. “I’ve read his new book twice. My daughter asked me who from my past I’d like to reconnect with, and I said ‘Salter.’ ” What is left unsaid is that he never called him.